21+ Best Free Responsive Magazine WordPress Themes of 2017 to give your site Awesome, Clean and Beautiful Magazine or News site Look in no time

Looking for awesome free responsive magazine WordPress themes??

Then, just hop in, we will be making you familiar with the best free responsive magazine WordPress themes of 2017. If you have a magazine or blogging site then you must understand people today will be viewing your site not only from laptops & desktops but mostly from handheld devices like mobiles & tablets. Thus, your site must be responsive to cover all the users using small devices.

The next important thing is, your site must be able to show news or posts in organized manner that is easy to access in the eyes of your site visitors. Just like a physical magazine, your magazine site should show all your titles, contents & pictures in beautiful organized manner to attract readers. People today tend to read magazine sites more often than physical magazines. Best FREE WordPress News Magazine Themes #2017 #freewpthemes #magazinethemes Click To TweetSo, if you have a magazine WordPress site which is not beautiful, not well-organized and not responsive then you should know your competitors are way ahead of you. If you want to move forward with time then you will need to use a WordPress magazine theme that is beautiful, well-organized and responsive.

Below are some of our hand-picked responsive magazine WordPress themes of 2017 that are not only awesome but totally free. 🙂

ColorMag

This is one of our own themes. ColorMag was just released on 30 May 2015. Within just around couple of months ColorMag was successful to get more that 35,000 + downloads. You can see more stats and reviews in this page.

ColorMag is a perfect responsive magazine style WordPress theme. Suitable for news, newspaper, magazine, publishing, business and any kind of sites. Most of the old magazine sites are so compact with news and pictures that the sites looks terrible. While making this theme, our main focus was to show as much news as the site owner wants yet making the theme clean, well-spaced and beautiful. ColorMag makes beautiful use of categories and support different styles widgets to show the posts of categories beautifully. Different color for different categories happens to be the heart of this theme so with this feature you can represent different categories with colors of your choice. Give it a try you will certainly find it interesting.

To get more familiar on using the theme you can view the theme instruction here. As with our all themes, support for theme is absolutely free. Have any confusion with the theme, just put your queries here.

Envince

Envince is a drag and drop Magazine Responsive WordPress Theme. The theme integrates beautifully with the SiteOrigin Page Builder, thus the possibilities are limitless. You can create any layout you want, it is as easy as that. Page Builder by SiteOrigin is the best free drag and drop solution out there. You can use any widget available in WordPress by default, widgets from SiteOrigin itself, widgets from any plugins and custom Magazine related widgets provided by this theme to create any content type you want. Also, if you don’t want to use this plugin, it’s all okay. The widgetized magazine template will serve you and help you in creating the magazine site with the TG: custom widgets to highlight your featured posts and featured images.

The theme has many other numerous features that you can control from Appearance->Customise and preview the changes in live mode before pushing changes to site permanently. That’s is super cool.

ColorNews

ColorNews is a perfect free modern news style WordPress theme. It is fully responsive theme that looks beautiful in all types of screens including desktops, tablets, iPhones, smartphones as well as small cellphones. This theme provides beautiful well-organized magazine look and feel, carefully designed to give stunning impression to your visitors. Represent your categories with different colors and make your site colorful and crisp. This theme is specially crafted for news, newspaper, publishing and magazine types of site. Got a new magazine site project? This theme will be an ideal fit.

ColorNews is similar with our ColorMag (mentioned above in this same list) in many ways but also different in other interesting ways. Download it and give it a try. Theme features full width slider, use it to give focus to latest posts or posts of specific category. Now, if you are a full width slider lover then this is the magazine theme for you.

FlyMag

FlyMag is a clean and beautiful magazine style theme by ThemeIsle. The theme has solid coding and clean design. This theme offers a variety of widgets which allows you to create interactive and beautiful magazine site. There are more than six custom widgets, all targeted in making a beautiful news site and presenting the content to your visitors in a clean and well organized manner. The widgets help you highlight your posts, comments and videos. The theme makes beautiful use of featured images so your posts will be presented with nice featured images.

Actually, due to its super flexibility, ample of custom widgets, widget areas and wide range of options, this theme can be used for any kind of sites and not just for magazine sites. The possibilities are countless. FlyMag theme is fully responsive and fabulous by its design. Your website content will look great on any screen size or resolution. The theme is optimized for SEO and speed.

ionMag

If you are looking for a modern magazine theme with live page builder support, ionMag News WordPress theme by tagDiv is the perfect one. You can drag and drop the elements you want, reorder them, customize and create beautiful web pages in no time. Precisely, you can place any content anywhere and build a unique layout of your own. Therefore, ionMag is ‘one theme’ with infinite variations. The template follows the best coding, web design, and SEO practices to provide you with all the modern features.

It is a free theme, yet offers plenty of premium-like options and widgets. There are some very useful custom widgets like the Social Counter widget, Instagram widget, Popular Category widget, Author Box widget, Ad Box widget, etc. Moreover, the ionMag theme brings you a surprisingly well-designed advertisement system that allows you to place ads in various places of your site. ionMag Free News Theme is responsive, retina and AdSense ready, right out of the box. In conclusion, it has all the features you may need for a complete online magazine. And, all those options are at your fingertips. Moreover, it is easy to use so you can instantly customize the theme from header to footer without writing any code. It’s a perfect theme for newbies, as well as webmasters or design agencies.

eStore

Yes, eStore is actually specifically designed for eCommerce site. But actually all the WooCommerce features are activated when you install the plugin ‘WooCommerce’. So, if you don’t use the WooCommerce plugin, then it is actually a theme perfect for a Magazine site. In fact, there is a demo that shows how it will look for a magazine site, just click on the ‘Live Preview’ button below. Now, again if you run a magazine WordPress site and also sell some products or willing to sell some products then eStore is the theme for you. You won’t be needing anything else, this theme will cover you all up.

The theme allows you to set colors for different category. You can show the posts in home page in different beautiful layout and designs. Theme comes with image advertisements widget as well. With all header options, design options, layout options, primary color option, logo option and many more you can give the site look that you want. The theme is SEO optimized so that your site content is sure to get better search rankings. Therefore it is perfect theme for building a beautiful online magazine.

GreatMag

GreatMag is a gorgeous WordPress magazine theme FREE. It is a great WordPress template for building modern magazine websites, online news sites, editorials as well as simple blogs. It has plenty of features and options for creating a completely professional looking magazine site. Completely based on latest WordPress Customizer, it allows you to edit the website design instantly with live previews. You can customize color options, font options, backgrounds etc. from the Customizer easily.

GreatMag theme supports page builder plugin; design possibilities are limitless. Besides, it has several in-built custom widgets due to which you can design your pages in stylish and unique way. The theme allows you to add advertisements and earn money from the website. Besides, GreatMag theme features notification bar, social icons, carousel posts, sidebar options, customizable footer, blog layouts, Google fonts etc.

Tortuga

Tortuga is a highly flexible free magazine theme for WordPress. It comes with a graceful magazine homepage template based on widgets. You can easily design the website homepage with drag and drop custom widgets available in the theme. It provides with header widgets area – customize the website header and create a classy design. You can add your required social media icons, advertisements in the header, and earn money.

The theme provides three different layouts for post archives; One column, Two column ad Three columns with sidebar. Additionally, there is post slideshow option to showcase your most important posts. You can choose a slider category, number of slider posts and the slider animation as per your wish and build stunning design. It is fully responsive theme that adapts quickly to any type of device. Besides, it is simple, and beginner-friendly theme – anyone without any coding skills can build a complete website with it.

Editorial

Editorial is a free responsive WordPress news magazine theme suitable for editorial sites, online magazines and newspaper websites. It provides a magnificent magazine layout so that you can create a professional website. Based on Customizer tool, it allows you to customize all the theme settings in the live preview mode. Furthermore, easy to use drag and drop widgets make your task much easier. Editorial theme is fully-widgetized that comes with a bundle of useful custom widgets.

Editorial theme is simple, easy to use, and beginner-friendly. Anyone without any coding knowledge can also build awesome magazine website using this theme. It is fully responsive so that your site content is sure to look great no matter what device you are using. It is SEO friendly and lightweight. Add nice content and keep your site updated, your site is sure to get better SEO ranks. Last but not the least, Editorial is WPML ready. Translate your website into any language you want; publish local news and articles for your local audience.

PT Magazine

PT Magazine is a modern looking responsive magazine theme by Promenade Themes. This theme can be used for any kind of news and magazine sites. To be more precise, it is ideal for dynamic news, online magazines, publishers, blogs, news portals, newspapers, editors and other creative sites. This theme has been beautifully crafted by following the best SEO practices. Thus, this free magazine theme is super-fast and secure. Moreover, it is child theme ready and cross-browser compatible.

Besides, this theme has pools of outstanding features at your disposal. It offers fully responsive layouts to make sure that your site content looks great on every device. Furthermore, it features video instructions along with a featured slider, custom menu and custom widgets. PT Magazine also consists of an overwhelming number of color options to choose from. Moreover, you can change the site color with just a single click. In addition, this theme comes with 4 layouts of news list based on a widget and the drag and drop widgetized sections.

All in all, PT Magazine can definitely be one of the best choices if you are looking for a free magazine theme with modern looks and layout accompanied with powerful features.

Hueman

Every time I look at the demo of this theme, the design of the theme really amazes me. It is one of my favorite themes and the theme clearly shows all effort the author Alexander Agnarson has put into it. It is one the most downloaded themes at wordpress.org.

Hueman is a responsive 100% high resolution theme for blogs and magazines. Unique toggle sidebars give a great browsing and reading experience on both tablet and mobile which is rarely seen on other responsive themes. If you want to give your site a fresh look then Hueman is the theme for you. The options available are really awesome and can be matched with premium themes. Hueman theme is both available in wordpress.org and theme page (click the learn more button below). However, they are little different. The version of Hueman available on wordpress.org is a “lite” version, and does not include sharing buttons, basic shortcodes and some other things as it is seen as plugin territory.

JustWrite

Just like the name ‘JustWrite’, with this theme sit back and just focus on writing your content, all other things like clean crisp look, bold typography, awesome responsive design and other features necessary to attract readers will be handled by this theme.

JustWrite is a theme with clean lines and an open-spaced design to give your site clean crisp magazine look. What makes this theme different from others is that if you want your site content cover all the width of the screen even if it is 1920 pixels wide screen then this is the theme for you. Don’t understand what I am talking about then just view the demo link below in 1920 pixels wide screen and you will love the look of it. Some of the nice features out of many included in this theme are custom widgets, options panel, page templates, jQuery slider and multiple sidebars.

MH Magazine Lite

MH Magazine lite is simple and clean magazine WordPress theme with site width of 980 pixels. It lets you create professional magazine sites being simple and super-easy. The theme is a free responsive magazine, dynamic news or blog WordPress theme for modern online magazines, news websites, professional blogs and other editorial websites. The theme has clean and enchanting design to feature your blog stories, news, articles, ads and more.

It is a fully widgetized theme with 12 widget locations where you can place standard WordPress widgets, custom widgets or ads. In addition, it comes with some useful custom widgets for custom posts, slider, Facebook like box etc. It works well with Contact Form 7 and multiple WordPress plugins. It is lightweight, minimal and superfast.

AccessPress Mag

Some of the interesting features of this theme are posts slider (shows latest posts or specific category as you like), multiple layout, fully modern magazine home page layout and many more. The theme also supports inbuilt strings translation feature, now this might be interesting for all those users who want to change the English words present in the theme to their native language right inside from the theme’s options panel without creating language files or using translation type plugins. The theme also recommends to install the AccessPress Social plugins which adds to the making the theme unique. This theme undoubtedly can be matched with any premium magazine WordPress theme.

Fashionista

If you are a person that is into classic style magazine theme then this might be the theme for you.

This theme focuses on black and white component and give an elegant classic feel to your site. The theme is clean & white while the black thick borders under different section of the theme adds classic look to it. aThemes are one of the awesome theme providers, their themes are simple, clean and easy yet very powerful. Some of the highlighted features are custom widgets, featured images, social media icons, favicon upload and many more. Also, google fonts and color options will give you the power to make the theme look you like.

Fashionista theme is fully responsive so that your website will quickly adapt to any type of device. You site content will look great on all devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones and small mobile phones.

MesoColumn

MesoColumn is all about adding your flavour & colors to theme. With this theme you can add colors to almost every component of the theme. Be it categories, navigation, sidebar, footer and links, you can add colors of your choice to it.

If you are into magazine style theme that supports community & ecommerce then this is the theme for you. You can choose a blog style layout or featured category magazine grid layout for homepage. The theme is built with semantic HTML5 and CSS3 for modern browser. The theme has array of features and not only this it supports many awesome popular plugins like BuddyPress, WooCommerce and BBPress. What more do you need?

This theme is stylish, perfect for your magazine, blog or news websites and follows most popular latest design trends. ForceFul Lite can be set up quickly and easily, comes with a number of features that increases the usability of any website supported by its, putting you in control of the look and feel of your website in moments. Some of the highlighted ones are multiple layout options, unlimited sidebar, featured posts slider, social links support, translation ready and many more.

Black & White

If you are into black-white types of design then look no further, Black & White is the theme for you. This is really one amazing looking theme from Modern Themes.

The theme shows full width slider and has classic black and white feel just like the name suggests. The optional black and white hover effects can help set you apart with the magazine style theme. Some of the amazing features included in this theme are unlimited color options, google font selector, xml sample content and many more. All the options available are in the Customize screen of dashboard, change anything and preview it before saving the changes.

Black & White theme is optimized for SEO and speed. Built by the professional WordPress developers, the theme is a powerful free theme for everyone.

ComboMag

ComboMag is an elegant magazine style WordPress theme from MagPress. This theme has built-in color options for your website header, navigation, sidebar and footer. With the popular usage of Custom Web Fonts in many website development nowadays, this theme also had 600+ Google Web Fonts for you to choose from. ComboMag is suitable for any blogger running news, magazine and website development related blogging platform. With the multi purpose design in mind, special care was put into creating this theme, many users love to use this theme in their MultiSite WordPress Website Development Network.

ComboMag theme is a modern responsive WordPress template. Your webssite will look stunningly beautiful on all devices across all the web browsers. It is fast loading and SEO friendly.

Gadgetry

Gadgetry is a Free WordPress theme with a clean and modern style, best suited for blogging or small magazine style websites. The theme has a fully responsive design that fits perfect to all types of screens. No worries if the website visitors are browsing on their small handheld mobile phones or large screen desktops.

The theme is minimal and very easy to set up. If you are a beginner without any coding knowledge, this theme may be the perfect pick for you. You can change colors, backgrounds and many more directly from the WordPress admin, in a matter of clicks. Modify the highlight colors with single click. Theme has many features like HTML5 animated slider, built-in page layouts, powerful contact form module, unlimited sidebars, chock-full of shortcodes, built-in advanced SEO options, 1 click content install and many more. The theme is built on awesome Fuse Framework just like with other themes of ThemeFuse.

Resolution

Resolution is another awesome magazine style theme from kopatheme in this list. The theme is well-organized and colorful which adds to bring life to your site. It is 100% responsive template for WordPress that looks brilliant on any device regardless of the size and resolution of the screen

The theme has tons of great features included inside it. To name them, they are theme options, homepage layout options, google web fonts, header options, social links support and many more. The theme is modern, trendy and is perfect for blogging, magazine and news type of sites. Also, the theme has unlimited sidebars which enhances the functionality of the theme. It is a SEO friendly theme which makes your site get better search engine rankings and therefore more visitors.

Dynamic News Lite

Dynamic News lite is responsive magazine style responsive WordPress theme with bold colors and fonts. It comes with a featured content slider and a magazine page template. Addtionally, the theme provides plenty of features and options that enable you to create professional-looking news and magazine websites in no time.

Dynamic News theme is from ThemeZee and they are releasing magazine themes since 2010. The theme is perfect for news and magazine websites as well as blogs. The main highlights of Dynamic News are its configurable magazine-style front page template and featured post slider. Also, it has many features like social icons, header search form, 3 category posts widget, custom header image, custom background, strong colors, bold typography and many more.

Surfarama

Surfarama is simple, clean & bold magazine style theme and displays the posts in pinterest type layout. This theme is fun theme which uses the popular mason style layout on the home page and category pages to highlight imagery and make for a very visual presentation. It’s perfect for travel and magazine style blogs heavy on the imagery.

The theme is highly customizable with the ability to upload your own logo, set the background color (or image), the primary theme color and even color code the categories without any coding required. It is a great theme for the beginners as it allows creating a professional looking website without touching any code. The theme is fluid responsive that is created intuitively to fit with any type of screen. Your website content will look great on all types of devices including desktops, laptops, iPhones, tablets, smartphones as well as small mobile phones.

Rubine Lite

Rubine Lite is another awesome magazine style theme from ThemeZee. The strong point of this theme is it offers a gorgeous featured content area on the home page to highlight your most important posts. In addition to that, you can also add your social media icons in your website due to which your site visitors can follow your posts in social media networks.

This theme was created with usability and simplicity in mind thus you will find this theme piece of cake to use. The setup of Rubine lite takes no more than 5 minutes in total and you can immediately start writing content which is far more important than spending hours to configure your theme. All options are from WordPress dashboard customize area so changing and configuring theme is easy and fast.

Sanjip Shah

Founder at ThemeGrill. Started WordPress in early 2012. Knows how to design and code. In my free time, I occupy myself with movies, friends, online games like Dota 2 and many more random stuffs. Follow me on twitter at @sanjipshah.

99 thoughts on “21+ Best Free Responsive Magazine WordPress Themes of 2017 to give your site Awesome, Clean and Beautiful Magazine or News site Look in no time”

Hi… thanks for sharing this amazing list of themes with us. I have seen all these themes. all are very creative. word press is a good platform for websites. And responsive web designing has become an essential part of the web designing.I have got many ideas for my website now.glad to receive something new. grateful for sharing.

Hi Ashley, Just checked your site and it looks awesome. 🙂 I installed the theme and actually I also could not find that specific option. I have contacted the theme author about this and let’s see what they have to say about this. If they reply, I will pass it to you.

However, I would say you can try this. I see you have used the Jetpack wordpress plugin. Please activate the ‘Custom CSS’ module. You can then go to Appearance->Edit CSS. Try the following CSS and save the changes.img.grayscale { filter: none; } Hope this helps.

I love the magazine layouts but need to have a directory on my site as well. I’ve thought about plugins but not sure which is more stable. Generally the plugins don’t look as good as the theme from the two most popular that I have seen. Any advice on having the best of both worlds.

Hi, While using a free WordPress theme, yes you should be careful about where you are getting the theme from. However, I always pick themes are completely spam free. All these themes are mostly from wordpress.org repo and well renowned authors in WordPress market. WordPress.org themes are well checked by reviewers and have to pass theme review standards. In short, yes all these above themes are 100% safe to use and spam free. These themes are free premium quality themes and if these themes fit your need then why go for a pro. 🙂

I used Hueman but its quite slow, the page views dropped suddenly after uploading this theme then I tried mag which is quite but due to some reasons I had to remove that too. Now looking out for some other.

Hi, Thanks for trying the theme and the feedback. As it is a magazine style theme, there are lots of images and scripts that needs to be loaded. This might be slowing the site. There could be many other reasons too. Yes, you can try other themes as well and see what suits you best.

thanks for sharing it unfortunately nearly all of these themes are not for free – the free versions are not as on the demo sites to get them done as u can see u need to buy the full theme versions so u should change ur article title please

Hi, Any of the above site should work great for your news or magazine type of site. Please view the demos and try the respective theme and see if it suits your site content. Also, we have released a new news style free theme, you can check it out here http://themegrill.com/themes/colornews

I want to know the slider plugin for WordPress post like to show text along with image. Actually I have a cricket blog . I used to update posts in Top 5 , Top 10 this kind of posts format but i don’t know how to separate the post in slide format like to view by clicking next in single post rather i used to post the complete article as full post. It would be grateful if someone suggest the right plugin to fulfill my query.

The Modernthemes (this theme’s author) provide XML demo content withing the theme folder. You could try installing the demo content. Once you add the demo content, perhaps it will be easier to know how to setup the slider. I would redirect you to the theme author support but looks like they don’t provide free support for their themes. Hope this helps.

really appreciate you for making these themes available for use. I have been using couple of them on different websites and all are working with ease response. moreover templates are easily modified according to need.

When you download and install the theme. It actually shows no content (if your WordPress install is a fresh one) or the content that you have in your current WordPress install. The theme does not come with demo data by default. By reading the instruction provided by the Theme authors, you can make the site just like demo above.

Could help me….I am trying to identify a good free responsive theme for my blog NewsTikka.com maybe you could help… I am seeing some challenges in the current themes i have used like 1) Users are unable to comment on the site unless they post face book comments 2) When I try to use the Facebook logo to post the blogs on FB, another wrong image (from my media gallery itself) gets tagged with the write-up….

ColorMag would be an awesome choice for your blog. The ColorMag theme can show a lot of news of different category right from the home page in a beautiful, clean and organized manner. Give it a try, I am sure you will love it.

Hey Sanjip… we are looking for a news cum magazine theme which works as a front end to our existing job portal. I liked Mesocolumn and Colormag. Can you help on some specific queries we have separately from the forum.

i was looking for a responsive magazine theme and i have found this blog helpful but there are more latest magazine themes are out, so iam looking forward for your updated post and thank you for this one

Hi lijokallada, Thanks for your suggestion/ heads up. 🙂 We have updated the post with some new themes. Anyways I think the themes which seem old are still popular, and new enough to use as they are frequently updated with latest WP features by the authors. Thanks!

Hi Otaku, I am not sure which theme you are talking about. Whichever the theme may be, it would be better if you contact the respective theme author for any support query. If it’s about ColorMag or any of our theme, please post your query in our support forum. Thanks!

Hi.. I would like to know whether these themes are really free… like really free.. Like the theme Envince thats number 2 on your list offers 2 download buttons one is demo and the other is paid version of the same for 69 bucks. I am just starting out so all these things are really new to me I would simply like to know whether I can use free version of the theme Envince or any other theme for that matter, for monetisation. Kindly reply ThankYou

Hi Arpit, I wonder how you missed ‘Download Free Version‘ button right above ‘Buy Pro Version $69 ‘. And right there next to these two buttons, you can see the other two buttons which are demos for each free and pro version. Therefore, Envince theme is available there completely for free as well as paid version. Below in the features section, we have clearly mention what features are only available in pro version so there must be everything clear. Please have a look. If you need any more assistance, contact our customer support team. Thanks and good luck Arpit. 🙂

Hi Jack, Can you please let us know which theme you are talking about? Well, all the themes mentioned here are completely free (most of them featured on WordPress.org). Some of them have a premium version as well but this post discusses only the FREE version features. If you want to check our collection of premium magazine themes, check it here: https://themegrill.com/blog/wordpress-magazine-themes/. Thanks!

Excellent collection of Free responsive wordpress themes. But All these themes appear as magazine themes My blog JivansutraDOTcom is a normal blog with detailed posts. can you guide me about those ads ready wordpress themes which are best for normal blogs( means having right sidebar and with footer widget ready) and are available in wordpress.org repository in case if themegrill lack such free themes. thanks for your help.

Sure. I just checked your blog. You have used default Twenty Seventeen theme. Well, all the features you want are built in carefully on our theme ColorMag which is available in the official theme repository WordPress.org as well. If you want theme instructions and tutorials, visit ColorMag theme page on our site. And finally, if encounter any problem, feel free to contact our support team. Thanks! 🙂

Nice collection of themes buddy.. all themes are awesome. It would be nice if you mentioned “HOORAY” theme in your list. Coz it has a great UI and number of short codes to use.. Anyway good article dude.. keep it up. 🙂

Hi, Thanks for your nice words. Just checked the theme ‘Hooray’, undoubtedly a great theme, however, we can’t mention it here because it is the list of free themes. We would surely consider mentioning it on our premium theme collections. Thanks!